Madison Central Library to display “Racial Justice Maps”

The Madison Central Library will display four “Racial Justice Maps” from Feb. 1-Feb. 28, each one with a different area of focus.

Geographer Elsa Noterman and printmaker Anders Zanichkowsky made the maps, which focus on three racial inequity topics: indigenous land use and colonization, incarceration and homelessness.

“As activists, we want to provide another way for people in Madison to engage in the conversation about race and (in)equity in our city which was recently provoked by the Race to Equity Report,” Zanichkowsky said on his website.

Each week in February will see a new map across from the first floor circulation desk at the library. The first week is “Effigy Mound Map of Colonized Isthmus,” the second is “Tree Map of Ho-Chunk and Colonized Isthmus,” the third is “‘Free the 350’ Decarceration Map of Madison” and the fourth is “Day in the Life Homeless Map of Madison.”

The BLINK grant funded the project.

“BLINK is an opportunity for experimental, ad-hoc, temporary works of art to sprout up throughout the community and vanish leaving residents and visitors eager to see what is next,” according to the City of Madison website.

Zanichkowsky said he hopes UW-Madison students explore the pieces.

“[Students] sort of get trapped in their sense of what’s happening on campus and I think that this can help bring people a little further outside into the rest of Madison,” Zanichkowsky said.

The decarceration and homeless maps were both made with help from the community.

“Making our ‘Homeless’ map we invited people experiencing homelessness to draw their daily path through Madison over a base map of the city’s streets, which we later removed, leaving only their drawings to represent the city,” Zanichkowsky said on his website. “Our ‘Free the 350’ Decarceration map was a large-scale woodcut we printed with the participation of other activists, artists, and members of the public.”

All the maps will be displayed together March 4 at the library’s Night Light event.